this book was very raw, gripping, and just overall everything i loved and expected. this was one of the best ya books I've read, and it definitely brought something new to the genre.

The title, cover, and dystopian nature is what made me want to read this book. I love end-of-the-world stories. While I enjoyed many parts of this book, it didn't completely float me boat. It ended up being only an okay read due to me personal preferences.

I enjoyed the writing style of this, it reminded me a lot of how the Windsinger trilogy is written. However, to be a longer novel I did find at times the pacing to be lagging. The concept is interesting and well developed. As much as I wanted to give this a five-star rating for me it is a little too slow and rambling. It does have a very classic feeling overall in tone and nature. I would recommend if you are looking for a shorter decent length dystopian to pick up.

It took me a long, long time to read this and although I tried hard to push through, I couldn't bring myself to finish this book.

There's a combination of things that had me ultimately giving up on reading this:
1. The pacing is steady but also incredibly slow. The action scenes could've been breaths of fresh air (used to keep readers on their toes), but lengthy explanations of those moments just kept everything slow.
2. Although I'm intrigue by the way the story is written, it also made it harder to read. This could be formatting errors in the e-galley provided, or it could be on purpose. Either way, the "hede", em dashes and the general lack of quotation marks to mark which phrase is a dialogue required so much energy for me to decipher what is what, that I was just too exhausted to read more than a few pages each time.
3. I was also expecting the narrative to sound more young adult than middle grade so this kind of threw me off.
4. The romance also feels out of place and there's a number of decisions made that had me going ???

Despite the above, I really love the premise. I honestly would've read this book till the end—even with the slow pacing, the questionable moments, out-of-place romance and the middle grade tone still in place. It's just the way the story was executed bogged me down the most.

i really enjoyed reading this book, the characters were great and I really enjoyed the story. I look forward to more from the author.

I was surprised to realise that this was my first Kevin Brooks book, but I doubt it'll be my last.

This dystopian novel about a boy who was kidnapped by wild dogs and in turn became a Dogchild felt like a refreshing take on a genre that has become all too predictable. It comes with many of the usual dystopian tropes: post-apocalyptic starvation, tyrannical leaders, strict regimes and violence, but the rehumanising of the Dogchilds gave it an interesting spin.

It was well-written and relatively fast-paced but I did think some parts were too drawn out (it's pretty long). There was a touch of romance in amongst the action, but not enough to put of teenage boys who I think would be its target market!

The premise of this book was too good to pass up and while I enjoyed it, I felt that Dogchild seemed to drag a bit in parts. - a lot of description as the plot stayed still. It's a long book, so it took me a while to get through but all in all, it wasn't bad.

Thank you to NetGalley and the Publisher for my copy of this book.

This book started off great. The world was interesting and the there was nice character development. I was really looking forward to where this would go.
Summary- Jeet was taken as a child by a pack of Deathland dogs and raised as one of them. He was then recaptured by men and “rehumanized” when he was six. At 12 the leader whams Jeet to write the history of his people because Jeet has an objective pout of view and there will soon be a war with the much larger Dau tribe and their history needs to be written.
From that point there should have been some major editing and cuts. Probably 200 pages could have been sheered off and it would have only improved things. It went from being very compelling to slow by the time I got 20% in. It never really got better. It became predictable. Tense and bloody scenes of 25 foot long eels attacking out from the ocean mud became mundane trailer plots.
The best thing from the book was the line “Reasons don’t change reality. We are here. This is what we have. This is our world.” I found this quite profound.

There were just too many unbelievable decisions and too much dragged out.

So different but very readable. Didn't think I would enjoy this but I actually did. Looking for something different and offbeat? Pick this up. I know there are people who will enjoy this fast paced and well told story. Happy reading!

Jeet is a dogchild, a human raised by dogs who was captured and rehumanized. He now has the task of writing down the events leading up to the war between his town and the Dau, an enemy settlement.

When I first started reading this book, I was very wary because with Jeet telling the story, there are deliberate spelling and grammar errors with no quotation marks when people are talking. It makes sense, but it was hard to read at first. Once you get used to it, the book pulls you right in.

I enjoyed Jeet as a character. He’s honest and writes everything he sees and feels. The writing actually fits Jeet well and I’m glad that it’s written the way it was. It feels as though you are discovering the world as Jeet is.

This book is violent and raw with themes of sexual assault, but it drives the book in a way that makes you want more. I would not be opposed to sequel! I want to know more about Jeet, Chola Se, the Dau and everything that makes up the history of this story. I want to know what happens after the end, too.

I would recommend this to young adult readers who are able to handle the harder subject matter and who enjoy dystopian novels.

Another topic that I just can't resist is feral children... and combined with my love of dogs, as soon as I saw the cover of this YA dystopian fantasy, I knew that I had to read it. And I loved every page of it! Jeet is the young narrator here - tasked with writing an account of his seaside town and their ongoing war with the Day - a stronger, better supplied and more multiplied people. Jeet is one of the few dogs children in the town. Stolen by dogs, then re-captured by people and "humanized," Jeet provides a unique perspective. HIs story of a crippled, struggling post-apocalyptic world is engaging and downright fascinating from the very start. The whole world comes to life and it is such an exciting and compelling read. I really couldn't put it down! I loved the premise, the way that the relationships grown and develop and the action-packed plot! I really enjoyed this! Stylistically, there are a few things that are a bit distracting at first (the way contractions are handled), it is easy to get used to this. I am not sure if Brooks intends to write a sequel, but I certainly hope so! And I am eager to check out his books for adults as well!

This is a stark, often unsettling post-apocalyptic story. Jeet, a child raised by the wild dogs that killed his human family, lives in a settlement where there are few other "dogchildren" - most dogchildren don't rehabilitate back to being human well; they run away, back to their dog families or die in the process of rehumanizing. Jeet lives with his uncle, Starry, after the settlement kills his pack of Deathland dogs on a raid, and eventually, becomes trusted enough that town head Marshal Gun Sur first asks him to write a history of their people, and then, to be part of a spying mission as the group gets ready to go to war against their enemy settlement, the Dau. Chola Se, another dogchild, and the closest thing Jeet has to a friend, has been kidnapped in a raid on the settlement; Jeet rescues her and learns that she has been sexually assaulted mutiple times - including by their own settlement's second in command, Deputy Pilgrim. Jeet and Chola Se believe that Deputy is a traitor, but before they can enact their own plans, Pilgrim puts actions in motion that will turn the entire encampment against the two. While they want to flee, go back to their dog family and forget about the settlers entirely, but Chola also wants revenge against Pilgrim.

This is a gritty, rough story that includes sexual assault, graphic violence, and cannibalism. Definitely not for the younger set. The story is harrowing, with desperation that reaches out and grabs readers with every turn of the page. Kevin Brooks has created a stark, desolate landscape and characters that will stay with you after you finish the book. The love between Jeet and his dog mother makes for emotional, moving writing; Chola's rage, always simmering, ready to explode, will leave readers gritting their teeth. He gets to readers on a visceral level. The book is written as if it were Jeet's chronicle, so you won't see punctuation; there aren't traditional paragraphs, sentence structures, or spelling; there are no real chapter breaks, either; more like pauses between entries. If you have teen post-apocalypse fans that can handle rougher subject matter, give them this book.

Dogchild has a starred review from Booklist.

Disclaimer: I was given an early copy by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. Thanks to Candlewick Press and Netgalley for the opportunity!

First off, can I just say that this is a really long book? I loved how the premise of the book was set and it's not the typical dystopian YA that I'm used to reading, but it was good. Magical realism is not really one of my favorites, but after reading the plot, I still decided to give it a shot.

There might be parts where I felt that it was dragging, maybe because of how long the book was, but overall, you guys should still give this a shot! It's gripping and fast-paced. You might enjoy it a lot that I did.

Premise alone, this book is wild! I love it and any book that uses the form to help tell the story on a meta level. I think this book is excellent for teaching creative writing to young writers. It is a perfect example of how you can use the form to teach a story as much as the narrative. I found the book to be a lot of fun to read and it also made me want to include a character like Jeet in dungeons & dragons as either a playable character or a NPC. This book in creatively inspiring. I can understand it not being for everyone because of the meta-level storytelling, but it is a fun one to dig into.

For me this was a dystopian novel that didn't always fall into that genre. It had parts that were slow and action lacking but then it had bits which were surprising to read.

I wanted to know how Jeet did things like control the dogs and make them silent but there was no explanation.

Overall I thought the story was violent and gripping, raw and in your face but also quite a long story. I would suggest that anyone interested in dystopian novels give this a try if only for it's unique setting and raw story.

Dogchild is a gripping, original and fast-paced read, that is extremely clever and has characters which you can't help but become attached to as the story unfolds.

This is a loooooong book. I really liked the premise, unusual and different , however I found that the lengthy explanations of the fight scenes just left me uninterested. I wanted more of other aspects of the story and less of the pointless battle descriptions. Another thing that irritated me was the boys use of grammar. It made reading that book all that harder and as a dyslexic reader I don’t want any more obstacles. I just found this really effected the flow of conversation and I wasn’t entirely sure why this was put in place.
I enjoyed the overall story and with a little bit of editing I think this could be a really good book.

Jeet's world is a desolate one. Living in an isolated community on the edge of survival, he knows that his fellow villagers don't really accept him. His early life among the wild dogs that wander the wilderness and his subsequent "rehumanization" to the village means that he'll never be truly accepted. When tragedy strikes his village, though, and he becomes privy to some information that affects how he views their rival village - he makes the choice to act. And that choice is going to lead Jeet and his whole community to a final breaking point.

First off, this is a really long book. I read it on my Kindle so I didn't have much of a sense of how long it would be until I'd been reading for so long and realized I was only at 30%! I feel like it could've been much shorter and still have been an interesting story. Because it IS an interesting story - I liked Jeet's dog connection and how his life among them as a child influences his present day character development. I liked setting and even the plot is good, I just often found the length it took to make things happen (especially battles) made me loose my interest. Also, I wanted MORE BACKSTORY. More on the entire world but most especially WHY there are two rival, kill-each-other-until-we-are-all-destroyed villages. I had a hard time investing in their feud - it all seemed so useless! The first thing we learn about Jeet's village is that they have a deadly rival village....and that's all we ever really learn about it. Also, part of Jeet's character is that he somehow is unable to use English grammar, which just irked my eyeballs every time.

It's telling, though, that despite all these things that frustrated me, I still finished it because I wanted to know what happened. Readers who enjoy dystopian stories and who are just less picky that me will probably enjoy it. So, not a waste of time, just not a book I could let my brain and my disbelief relax into.